Work Text:
--
Not many people know that Fareeha can play the guitar.
Even fewer know she can play it well, as efficiently as she does anything else. It’s not the kind of old rock she plays over the hanger speakers either, or the kind she entertains with Jesse after too many drinks. It’s not the same guitar as the one she likes to pretend to play, on those rare moments of humor during a mission or training session.
It’s softer, more thoughtful. The kind that’s slow moving and felt more than heard. It’s melancholy. It’s pleading. It’s a memory. It’s everything Fareeha wants to say, but can’t.
It’s for that reason alone Angela’s been left wandering the halls of the watchpoint, straining her ears for the sad strumming chords and following them from one dead end to another.
Only Angela knows that Fareeha only plays her guitar when she’s unhappy.
--
It hadn’t been long after the recall that Angela had found Fareeha for the first time, hidden away in a small storage room on base. She’d been sprawled out on a makeshift bed, plucking at an old guitar while a broken window brought in the smell of warm ocean air and brushed her hair and the collar of her button down.
Angela had recognized nothing of the song other than its sad, slow melody.
She had realized a little too late that made she shouldn’t have been standing there, obviously interrupting someone who wanted to be alone, but by then, Fareeha had noticed her, a look of utter alarm crashing over her face.
“Sorry,” Angela had said, and then, fumbling almost, “I’ll leave.”
But before she had the chance wobble back down the ladder that’d led her there, Fareeha had said, “Stay. I mean, if you want too.”
Her voice had been so soft, Angela’d barely heard her. She hunched as she walked over to Fareeha, and then carefully settled against the wall. She took it all in slowly. Fareeha, the guitar, the small lantern and old blanket, the nervous expression on Fareeha’s face. “You play beautifully,” she’d said.
“Thank you,” Her eyes never quite met Angela’s. Instead her hands slid over the strings and she picked up the tune again, seemingly content to leave it at that.
--
They never speak of Fareeha’s habit of nesting in small hidden places with her guitar, although over the course of the next few months, Angela learns that Fareeha has multiple places around different bases. Instead, they speak of other things, missions and books and tv shows, favorite teas and wines and ways to better suit the strange synergy they share in the air.
They speak of their hopes for the world. They don’t speak about the sneaking glances, the quiet hours when neither can sleep, the moment of weightlessness, after kickoff and before the next thrust, when Fareeha lifts her visor to wink at her. They don’t speak of how Angela returns the wink, how they both know Angela’s suit shows her every rapid beat of Fareeha’s heart. How Angela is far worse at hiding her expression than she thinks.
They keep all the important words inside them, and share with each other what’s left.
--
“I only play when I’m sad,” Fareeha had confessed to her one night, drunk and languid. “I mean—when I’m mad, she makes me so mad.”
It hadn’t taken long for Angela to notice Fareeha’s sullen absence from her usual haunts on base ever since the return of Ana. How withdrawn she’d become over the com during missions, during de-briefing, the awkwardness whenever Ana and Fareeha had to share the same space. Ana as silent and expressionless as a stone,
Fareeha silent as well, but with an expression akin to the first few bits of shifting snow, the warning of an inevitable avalanche.
“She’s a difficult person,” Angela had replied, standing near the door. All Fareeha’s hideaways on that particular base had been known to her. Finding her had been easy. Whether Fareeha wanted Angela’s presence was another thing entirely.
A few notes from the guitar. A long drawn out scoff. Fareeha had looked like she wanted to say more, but instead, played her guitar a little more aggressively. “I’m so mad,” she had repeated.
Who she’d been trying to convince was up for debate.
“Do you want me to stay?”
The aggressive guitar playing never faulted. “Well, yeah,” Fareeha had replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
--
She’s checked over the places she knows Fareeha has hidden in the past and has even found a few places she didn’t know about along the way. Over the months she’d learn to look for the clues, footprints in dusty rooms, openings in the paneled walls, recently moved crates and boxes. She’d trained her ears to catch the soft tripping strings drifting from openings and vents and cracks, but it does nothing for her now.
The guitar sings ghostly and low, a murmur that Angela can hear, but cannot find. All she knows is the general area, the fact that the sound has remained in the area the last week, that Fareeha hasn’t moved from wherever she’s been hiding.
It makes Angela wish Overwatch wasn’t in the shape it was in. If only she could just ask Athena where Fareeha was, instead of picking through the decaying parts of the base, through empty rooms and dark corridors.
Distantly, she can hear Torbjorn yelling about one thing or another and she sends a dirty look in his direction. The guitar stops, or pauses, and Angela stills, waiting in the dim hallway that leads to the armory.
She holds her breath and prays for an encore.
--
“Mom taught me,” Fareeha had told her one night. They weren’t bundled up in one of Fareeha’s hideaways, but on the roof, staring at the stars. A blanket was under them, a small radio near their heads, inches and oceans in the space between their shoulders.
Angela had managed a hum. She’d been tired, loose-limbed, and with Fareeha’s scent curled around her like a blanket.
“And dad,” Fareeha’d continued, her voice quiet. “They both tried. I guess they had a thing for it. Guitars.”
“I find it hard to imagine Ana with a guitar,” Angela’d said, turning her head. She caught Fareeha’s smirk, before it fell back into a thoughtful frown.
“She couldn’t play very well. Same with dad.” Fareeha’s voice had dropped with a drag of air. “And I ended up teaching myself most of it.”
Back to looking at the sky, Angela had let her mind drag her elsewhere. She thought of a younger Fareeha, struggling to learn to play, thinking of her mother and father both hundreds of miles away.
She’d thought on that for a long moment and replied, “My mother,” and hadn’t that scraped raw against her throat, “tried to teach me the piano when I was a girl.”
“No kidding?”
Angela smirked ruefully. “’Tried’ being the keyword. I wanted to do other things. Fun things.”
“Fun things,” Fareeha echoed, a smile on her lips. “Can you still play?”
“Maybe. I learned quickly, but I was bored with it mostly. I was very young.”
“Would you ever play again? Like in the future?”
“No,” Angela said, closing her eyes. Her mother’s smile, the soft melody of the song, filled her mind. She’d been a busy woman, and yet she’d set aside time each Saturday to try and share a hobby she’d loved with Angela. A hobby that Angela hadn’t care for and acted as such. Her mother never once complained though, only exhibited an endless patience. “I find myself liking the thought of playing the piano even less now than I did as a child.”
Fareeha was quiet for a moment, then, quietly, “I think I know what you mean.”
--
Angela finds the maintenance hatch in the armory of all places, hidden behind a mountain of crates. There’d been just enough wrong with the section as she drifted through the area to make her pause, boxes shifted a little too perfectly, an attempt to match the chaos of the rest of the room.
The hatch itself hadn’t even been closed all the way, more than enough room left for Angela to slide her hands around its edge and pull.
The metal creaks and Angela steps inside.
Somewhere at the end of the hot, suffocating darkness, is Fareeha. Angela is sure of it.
--
It had only taken a moment for everything to unravel.
The sky’d been black with barely a sliver of pink against the far horizon, and the moon had hung low and glowing in the sky. They sailed like two comets over the countryside, lights trailing below them like luminous rivers, cold air rushing against them as Fareeha spoke over the comm.
They shouldn’t have been out that night at all, but Fareeha’s toothy smile had held unknown powers of persuasion, especially over an overworked Angela. Out there, with Fareeha, the weight Angela felt constantly on her shoulders seemed to melt away. They could do anything, go anywhere.
“This is the part where I bring out the snacks, but I seem to have forgotten them,” Fareeha had said after they’d settled on a hilltop for a brief rest. “Forgive me.”
“Forgiven,” Angela’d replied, grinning, but her expression had quickly sobered up. “Perhaps a sign that we should head back? It’s quite late.”
A pout. “I don’t want to head back yet.”
Angela laughed a little. “We can’t stay out here forever.”
“Why not?”
Something in Fareeha’s voice made Angela pause, and she turned to face Fareeha, the humor fading from her face. Fareeha had taken off her helmet, was staring at Angela with an open, serious expression, something in her eyes sending a shiver down Angela’s spine.
“Sorry,” Fareeha muttered a moment later, breaking eye contact. Her brow furrowed harshly. “You’re right. We need to head back.”
“I wish,” Angela replied quickly, reaching out like she expected Fareeha to just rocket jump away. Her cheeks had pinkened after her outburst, something swelling in her throat when Fareeha turned to her, her armored silhouette softened by the moonlight. “I wish we could stay longer.”
“But we can’t.”
“We can’t.”
“But I,” Fareeha hesitated. Came to stand before Angela, looking down at her, soft and imploring and then, alarmingly determined. “Is it selfish of me? To want to stay here forever with you?”
Dread sank in Angela’s stomach, as fear took hold. They weren’t---they didn’t talk about this. There was too much at stake, too much uncertainty. “No,” Angela whispered, despite all that. Her heart beat heavy, hot and cold, want and responsibility warring with one another.
“Good.” And then Fareeha leaned in.
Ultimately, the naked, hopeful vulnerability in Fareeha’s face was what ruined Angela that night.
--
Now, Angela looms over Fareeha, enjoying the breeze from the window, the victory of having finally found Fareeha, the look of utter panic on her beautiful face.
Fareeha opens her mouth, but then closes it. Her guitar rests on her stomach, glinting off the sunlight pouring in through the window. It’s silent now, Fareeha hands
having dropped uselessly to her sides the moment she noticed Angela.
“I believe,” Angela says, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. “We are long overdue for a talk.”
Fareeha’s shoulders curl a little, as if expecting a blow. “Okay.”
“Or,” and Angela can’t keep the roughness from her voice, the hope. “We don’t have to talk at all.”
Fareeha’s eyes flicker. A flash of understand passes across her face. Disbelief, relief, a deep ragged breath. “Isn’t that what got us into this mess?”
Angela smiles, and draws upon her. She’s more than delighted when Fareeha sits up to meet her. “I think we’ve reached a better understand now. Don’t you?” She pulls Fareeha towards her. “We can talk later. Perhaps first on ways to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings.”
And then her lips find Fareeha’s. Soft, warm, tingles that threaten to turn her boneless. The guitar gets set to the side, and Angela revels in the sound Fareeha makes, the shaking hands that find their way to her hips, the way Fareeha clings to hers like she’s her lifeline.
“How did you find me?” Fareeha manages to ask later between kisses.
Angela brushes her nose against Fareeha’s and smiles. “I followed the music.”
--